Into The Beyond
by Dragon Empress
Summary: An epilogue to an epilogue... 'She could dress it up, dress it down, turn it around anyway she liked, but the facts were always the same. He was gone.' After Sano leaves for the continent, everybody else just has to try and move on...


**Ahh, summer holidays...they make me want to write stuff. Which, I suppose, is a good thing...for me anyway, 'cos I like it lots.**

**But yes, I also like to write the good, old bit of pointless drama...like this, which I'd like you to read now, instead of all this babbling...**

**Disclaimer: Don't own a damn thing, sorry. **

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It's always one thing or another.

He's got aces up his sleeves, pockets full of tricks and enough excuses to last him a lifetime. He walks the line between law-defender and law-breaker like it's the Great Wall of China and he's alone on the battlements, under attack from both sides. He drinks like a sailor and swears like one too; eventually everybody finds that they've started picking up all his bad habits, one by one.

He's gone away to the continent now, and everybody's been mourning like he's dead.

They all miss him, but it's not the end of the world; they continue to live their own, separate lives.

Everything goes on…

---

Megumi feels most lonely in the spring. The air is clear and sharp and sweet, and she tastes plum blossom and sakura on the wind. Every once in a while it rains in Aizu, and she finds herself looking out into the distance, like she might catch a glimpse (way out, beyond…) of a tiny little dojo full of arguments and life.

Of course, she likes it here too, naturally, because it's home. Her first home, for better or for worse, and she will always be tied to it.

He never seemed to have that problem, and maybe that was why he was gone, and why he found it so damn easy to just_ go_. To pack up, take flight, say goodbye…and she could dress it up, dress it down, turn it around anyway she liked, but the facts were always the same. He was gone. That last night in the clinic back in Tokyo, the footsteps he left in her doorway had glistened all night, wet from the rain, and the ones heading _there _were covering up the ones coming _here_.

And then time just kept moving on. It still does, and the postmark on his rushed, chicken-scratch letters does too. Fortnightly scrawls from China blend seamlessly into long, daring tales, once every few months from far-flung corners of Europe…Africa…way out, beyond…

---

Kenshin still reads the letters sometimes, though Kenji doesn't ask to hear them very often anymore. He has other tales of other heroes in the books that Kaoru buys (because she wants her son to be _educated_, like she never really was) and encourages him to read, in-between his sword practises and surprisingly complex life as a small, energetic boy.

Kenshin is proud, immensely so. He loves his son very much, and this life he has accumulated. He would like another child sometime soon, a girl perhaps this time, hopefully with Kaoru's hair. It would certainly make for an easier life…

And life, well, it's still moving on, whether he likes it or not. _He's_ moving on, every single day of his life, and Kenshin understands this just as much as he understands the ache at the bottom of his spine in the morning, or the way his legs are starting to feel a little stiff on those very, _very _cold days in winter. It's all just a part of life itself, and for the most part Kenshin doesn't mind. He loves this life, he really does.

But sometimes…

There's a sea-breeze dancing in the hot, summer air, and he thinks of far-off places where nobody knows your name or cares what you look like. He thinks of things he's never seen before, only read about and out loud to all the people who always seem to gather round. As the stories get longer, less frequent, he can't help but think, as he falls slowly into life as it is, that some people just can't help but fall into legend…

---

It's always one thing or another, Yahiko decides, as he's walking home one evening, with the dojo softly backlit by the rising moon over his shoulder. The ground below is crunchy, thick with leaves, and he feels a chill that wasn't there a few weeks before. It seems that these days every night gets a little darker, a little earlier than the night before.

But then again, you can't have everything in life. You can't make the summer last forever, can't stop the timeless inevitability of the cold days and long nights that are coming. They're already there, on the horizon. Autumn is just a short stay in a waiting room, as you wait to hear the news you already know is coming.

Yahiko understands all of this, and when he thinks of waiting rooms he thinks of Megumi, miles away in Aizu, and wonders fleetingly what she's doing now and if she's happy doing it. Those little visits to Tokyo stopped around the same time the letters did, and Yahiko wonders now if that might just be the only reason she kept coming round for all these years.

He wonders now if, finally, she's moved on, and the spot between his shoulder blades (where the character for evil lies) itches painfully at the thought. Yahiko always thought that so long as she believed, he would still be able to believe as well, and that one day another letter might arrive from way out in the realms of legend…in the beyond…

But now it seems like that hope was all in vain…and as a soft, cold rain begins to fall, Yahiko wraps his arms tightly around his own body in an attempt to keep warm, and stops believing altogether…

---

Kaoru has never stopped believing. Even on nights like this, when she's alone and it's dark and freezing and hostile outside, the truth in her is still the same. There's no getting away from that, and she hopes desperately that she never, _ever_ stops believing.

Because life is good now, if a little slower than it used to be ten…twenty (and even more) years ago. Her children (grown-up now) still come in and out of the dojo frequently enough to make things interesting, and she watches with pride as Kenji tells his own assembled students about the sword that protects, with the _sakabato_ glinting in the sheath at his belt. Time is moving on again…life is simple, life is good.

But sometimes…

When Kenshin isn't home, when the children are all away living their own, adult lives, when she watches snow fall in clumps from an iron-grey sky; she wonders if adventure really must be given up to make way for stability. Must it really always be one thing or the other?

Yes, Kaoru supposes it must. And she wonders now, with an older mind that can't recall faces half as well as it used to, if _he _really is still out there, living the adventure…way out…beyond…

---

Outside a heavy rain is falling (the season nondescript), and in a small place in a big city, four people are sitting down to tea for the first time in over thirty years. The Akabeko, they all decide, is something that will never change, no matter how many staff members come and go. The sign outside remains the same, and inside, at least for a little while, they find a way to travel back in time. For a little while, it's like nothing has ever changed at all. Except…

The seat nearest the wall is unoccupied and lonely, despite the full saucer of sake that sits before it, in waiting. And it seems wasteful and dishonest to let it sit there like that, but nobody can really think of a proper way to say goodbye, so it almost makes sense to never say goodbye at all.

Because nobody wants to say that, deep down, they all feel a little betrayed, a little abandoned. So they just drink tea, and laugh and joke and be the friends they've always been, despite the gaps that have appeared here and there. If they've ever fallen apart, it's never been for long, and there's always been an unspoken _something _that binds them together as tightly as it binds them to the memories of a legend.

But, in the end, nobody can really travel back in time…the empty seat nearest the wall is proof enough of this to last the rest of their respective lifetimes. Everything goes forward, and ultimately, so must they.

So they smile into their teacups and feel nostalgic for a while, reliving all the good days spent in the company of a legend. They laugh a lot, act young again; they forget all about feeling betrayed or abandoned.

They drink their tea, they say goodbye.

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**Yes, er...you like? You dislike? You wonder what I've been smoking? The review function was created to generate answers to such questions! **


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